"My stay in hospital"

Dear Not impressed

I am sorry to hear that your experience in hospital was uncomfortable and intimidating, due to being placed in close proximity to a male prison patient.

In times of high demand for patients who require inpatient stay, as a last resort, they may be placed in a mixed gender room, which may also include patients who are accompanied by custodial or law enforcement officers. We endeavour to source gender specific rooms, however at the time of your stay, we unfortunately had no capacity to create gender specific rooms or move the prison patient to another location on the ward.

Royal Perth Hospital has a policy in relation to mixed gender bed allocations. It is only implemented when there is no gender specific bed capacity available. Staff endeavour to accommodate patients in gender specific beds at the earliest availability.

The single rooms at Royal Perth Hospital are allocated based on clinical needs and isolation requirements, for patients who are not suitable to be placed on an open ward. A daily audit is undertaken of single room occupancy and patient bed movements to ensure compliance with Royal Perth Hospital policies.

It is unfortunate on this occasion due to hospital bed demand, we were not able to accommodate the male patient in a single bed room or gender specific bed.

Thank you for taking the time to write about your recent visit to Royal Perth Hospital and providing us with the opportunity to feedback.

Kindest regards

Maha Rajagopal

Director of Nursing

Royal Perth Bentley Group